There are two ways to make a StudyMate project visible to students: sharing by URL and making the project available right within the course. This guide will explain the difference between the two, the latter of which also provides analytics and student usage statistics.
Note: Sharing a project does not give those with access editing rights to the project. Only the author can edit a StudyMate project.
The recommended sharing option for instructors using StudyMate content is to make the project available directly in the course. Using the same drop down menu next to the project or folder of projects, select Make Available in Course. Upon selection, a green star will appear next to the project in your list of projects, and the title of the project will appear at the top of the StudyMate screen for both you and your students.
There are several benefits to making StudyMate content available in the course. As an instructor, you can control when and for how long students can access StudyMate content, as you can easily go to any starred project and make it unavailable in the course at a later time, such as when the related exam will open. Also, this option will provide the instructor with student usage data. This data can be accessed in the drop down menu associated with the project, seen in item 4 above, or within the edit function of the project, as pictured below.
Note: If a StudyMate project is made available for a period of time, then made unavailable, the student data is retained. However, if a StudyMate project is deleted, so is the usage data associated with that project.
The other method of sharing content generates an external URL to the project. Using the drop down menu next to the StudyMate project, selecting Share creates a URL you can then send out to users. This URL can be used directly in a browser outside of Blackboard, so student views are not tracked, as they are anonymous; however, this does allow you to share StudyMate content outside the confines of the Blackboard course.
